


wrong kind of place

by badass_normal



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-31
Updated: 2010-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:23:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badass_normal/pseuds/badass_normal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>9 crimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrong kind of place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cloudytea](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cloudytea).



Jacob's touch is heavy like a fever. But the aftershock is nothing more than a cerebral flutter that is merely psychosomatic.

He kisses his unconscious son on the forehead and says nothing to his wife on the way out.

A lifetime of overwhelming, sleepless, suicidal guilt would have stretched before him, significantly longer than the eternity with which he has now been graced. He chooses to think of that, rather than dwell on the alternate world where the accident never happened.

He chooses to think of that, and soon he will forget that there was ever a choice at all.

\--

For years he mourns as if his son actually died, and he protects a Temple, a black place that as far as he can tell needs no guardian at all.

A guilty life melts into worthless and aimless and utterly alone. A guilty life flickers into a distant mirage that he does not bother to grasp at, to watch slip silvery through his fingers.

He stabs himself and imagines he hears a ghost or a god laughing from the trees. There is no blood but there is agony.

And again and again.

\--

Richard has the same story. Almost. The same story and different priorities.

One morning during a rainstorm he brings a woman. A woman whose eyes rake over him and strip him bare and she drinks in his desperation like it's from the fountain of youth and irony.

"I like sad men," she whispers when they are alone.

\--

Ilana's touch carries no power but he absorbs it and it saturates him with every resonance the gift of immortality lacks.

She is the first breathing mystery he has ever encountered. He does not know her story and someday he might.

The English language rings breathtaking in her voice.

\--

"Would you like me to kill you?" she breathes when he is inside of her, hands planted on the cold Temple floor, gentle thrusts rolling into her like the two of them are in another time and place, in a bed, in a city, in a relationship.

He changes his mind the moment the barrel of her gun presses into his forehead.

\--

She leaves when They arrive. His devotion must be restricted, she tells him.

He does suspect that his improving spirits influence her departure. Perhaps her preferences are truly for sad, lost men, and now that he has a purpose she is no longer drawn to him.

He mourns, just as before.

\--

There is a peace, a euphoria, that accompanies drowning. In his final seconds, he pretends that she is the one holding him down.

Perhaps she will mourn him. He suspects not.

He ought to have died long ago.

\--

_In a timeless place, a proud father who does not drink meets a lawyer with an air of mystery while he seeks a divorce._

_Dizzy and reeling, he sees the recognition, the unfamiliar attraction, unfold across her face._

_His life flashes before his eyes._

_It is their time at last. _


End file.
